She brings home the bacon, but should he cook it? High-status female breadwinners and their partners doing gender at home
Woodley, Lexter Natasha (2024) She brings home the bacon, but should he cook it? High-status female breadwinners and their partners doing gender at home. PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.
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Abstract
This study focuses on how high-status female breadwinner households in the Netherlands are doing gender at home and argues that both the gendered nature of home life and of work are needed to understand their households. The practical day-to-day management of this relatively new family structure is under-researched, resulting in a lack of knowledge about how these a-typical households negotiate their home and working lives, and to which extent they conform to or challenge gender norms. In-depth interviews with 36 men and women were conducted to understand the intertwined gendered effects of work and home lives. The findings demonstrate that when it comes to domestic work, rather than bargaining in simple economic terms, men and women tend to experience their tasks and time differently to each other. Regarding financial tasks, a larger earnings gap between the partners tends to come with more responsibilities for the breadwinning women; and the men are more inclined to distance themselves from a sense of commonality on household income. Concerning the influence of paid work, those couples where the women worked substantially longer hours saw the men do more in the household. Social norms seem to strongly weigh on gendered career paths, leading to the fact that tackling gender norms and being contrarian are tasks in themselves. Choosing non-conventional career paths comes with a high price, including the costs of increased chance of relationship conflicts and burnout due to the complex links with the a-typical home situation of female breadwinner couples.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Thesis |
|---|---|
| Copyright Holders: | The copyright of this thesis rests with the author, who asserts his/her right to be known as such according to the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. No dealing with the thesis contrary to the copyright or moral rights of the author is permitted. |
| Depositing User: | Acquisitions And Metadata |
| Date Deposited: | 15 Apr 2024 16:10 |
| Last Modified: | 16 Apr 2024 02:00 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/53390 |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.18743/PUB.00053390 |
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